Talks stalled in tribal pursuit

Kickapoo Indians seek creation of Plum Creek Reservoir

For nearly 20 years, Kickapoo tribal chairman Steve Cadue has talked about the need for the proposed Plum Creek Reservoir, which would eliminate chronic water shortages on the reservation.

The Plum Creek project was envisioned first in the early 1980s to impound water on a tributary of the upper Delaware River, where low stream flows in times of drought have frequently reduced the ability of the tribe's water treatment plant to pump drinking water to the 800 people living on tribal lands.

The Kickapoos' existing water system also supplies the tribe's agricultural holdings and the Golden Eagle Casino on Kansas Highway 20, six miles west of Horton.

"We're getting rainfall this summer, and that's the only thing that stands between us and running out of water," Cadue said. "Until we get the reservoir, we are existing in a survival mode."

Last month, a new word entered Cadue's vocabulary: "impasse," a reference to stalled tribal negotiations for the acquisition of about 1,000 acres of off-reservation agricultural land from 12 landowners in the Nemaha-Brown Watershed Joint District No. 7.

Until the acreage is acquired by the Kickapoos, the reservoir project can't begin, Cadue said.

"That's the impasse that we've reached," said Cadue, who claims that the watershed district's board has reneged on a 1988 pledge to invoke eminent domain -- a governmental entity's right to appropriate private property for public use.

After a year of failed negotiations with landowners, Cadue has acknowledged that the tribe's Golden Eagle Casino -- a glittering symbol of its economic resurgence -- actually has hampered efforts to come to terms with the potential sellers.

"I think it's sort of a conspiracy that each of them feels the need to hold out, and a lot of them have dollar signs in their eyes," Cadue said. "They realize that we don't have eminent domain authority, and they realize that we have some casino revenue. Most importantly, they understand how severely we need the project."

Landowner Lisa Lierz, who turned down an offer of $1,500 an acre for a tract of about 90 acres last spring, blames the Kickapoo leadership for the impasse by refusing to consider options other than a reservoir.

Lierz, of rural Powhattan, cited an April engineering report identifying an aquifer five miles southeast of the Kickapoo Reservation that would "almost certainly" supply the Indians' required water needs via underground wells. The report was commissioned by the Kansas Farm Bureau.

"Everybody around the Kickapoo Reservation is drilling wells these days," she said. "The city of Sabetha is doing it. The city of Horton's doing it."

The KFB study, prepared by King and Associates Engineering of Holton, estimated the cost of a five-mile waterline between the proposed well site and the reservation water treatment plant at less than $500,000 -- exclusive of site acquisition and drilling costs -- versus the estimated $6 million cost of building the reservoir.

Cadue said tribal leaders have discounted the study's findings.

"The biggest problem is it's off the reservation," he said. "We can't be putting wells, time and money into water sources we can't control."

Watershed district board member Leo Wessel has suggested Cadue and the tribal council members go back to the negotiating table with landowners.

"In my opinion, they all haven't really got together," he said. "You're never tied to just one option. You have to make offers and then counteroffers -- carry things through."

For his part, Cadue remains committed to the reservoir project.

"These watershed people don't want to be heavy-handed and use eminent domain on behalf of the Kickapoo tribe," he said. "But if, in my opinion, it involved the white community, it would have already been exercised."

Matt Moline is a freelance writer in Manhattan. He can be reached at moline@networksplus.net.